Lately in New Orleans, I’ve been dreaming of moving backward in time. It’s a strange sensation: to start at the end and move to the beginning. Time dissolves in dreams, as it does in certain stories.

Jews belong to the oldest book club in the world, and we’ve been dissolving time forever in our old stories, rereading them every week for thousands of years. Why do we do it? Rabbi Nachman, our great tale teller, said stories are meant to heal the soul. And in truth, five years ago, when I thought I was a homeless man, I found soul comfort in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and in stories of the rabbis, too.

My wife and I were traveling up north when Hurricane Katrina struck, and after the shocking failure of the federal levees, we sat in a cheesy hotel room in New York City drinking scotch and watching television coverage of our fragile city flooding. We were desperate for specifics. Was our home underwater?

A week later, my father died in a Florida nursing home. His body was brought home to Baltimore, where he raised me. We sat shiva at my brother’s house. A rabbi walked up to me and said, “You have lost your home.” I said yes, I think so. He said, “God is also homeless. He lost his ‘home’ because his children quarreled.” I knew he meant the story the rabbis tell, how we Jews lost the House of God because of “groundless hatred.”

God is homeless. That was a comfort somehow. Maybe my losses were part of a bigger story than I knew.

But I still hadn’t seen my home.

The TV showed journalists getting past the checkpoints. So my wife and I ginned up a press pass at a copy shop, and got an editor friend to sign it before we returned to New Orleans. Worked like a charm.

Our lawn was full of rack from Lake Pontchartrain. But our house was just high enough off the ground to escape the flood that took the homes of so many of our dear friends. A 130-mile-an-hour wind blew off half the house’s old roof slates. All I could think about was recovering that roof. I felt so exposed. We all did then.

There were only 10,000 people in New Orleans, and no slate roofers. So I found a company in Baton Rouge to help. Twice their truck was turned away at the checkpoints by the National Guard. They wouldn’t try again unless I came and accompanied them at 4 in the morning.

Somehow I persuaded the guard to let us pass. The roofers climbed my roof to apply the magical felt. In the dawn sky, I could see the outline of the new moon, the morning of the Jewish New Year. Three white heron rowed high above us, majestic, pure, and timeless. They were celebrating the birthday of creation—for the New Year is the birthday of the whole world.

Piles of torn branches baked in the hot sun up and down the street, and rough winds blew past our dry wooden houses. Fires broke out all over the city. On the way to the synagogue, we heard a fire alarm that no one was answering and saw smoke from a mansion off of St. Charles Avenue. Later we learned it had burned to the ground.

The Rosh Hashanah service was held in a packed little chapel. We sat in the anteroom on folding chairs. I couldn’t see the rabbi, but I heard the shofar. As I’d heard the soft friction of the heron wings beating, for the city was so quiet that morning, God was whispering.

We were in the first lines of Genesis: light, darkness, and the first winged creatures.

We roamed the empty streets in the days of awe. Amid shuttered shops, an open one sold ice cream—in one, exquisite flavor: “violet.” I spoke to a policeman who had waded through hell; we were all survivors. I spoke to everybody; there were no divides. Post-Katrina we were all like Jews who share a common history of catastrophe. Every conversation started with the same question: How did you make it through the storm?

In time the wild heron gave way to the inhabitants trickling back. Our street ceased to be a flyway, but we still had no mail service for a year. But we had our local newspaper. We felt abandoned, no longer part of the United States. I scanned the Internet by sitting outside shuttered cafes, then one reopened, and we gathered to be human. One morning in March, I read in the paper. A domestic dispute: The first murder. Cain slew Abel. We were moving deeper into Genesis.

And where are we now, five years later? There’s no single story. Many of us are still in Exodus, wandering far from home. Our Pharaoh is the Army Corps of Engineers, indifferent to God or Congress, and two years late on a project to protect the city. We’ve known the plagues of Egypt from coffin flies, to flood and fire, and bad government at every level. Now BP’s oil plagues our waters. Even before that insult, the marsh was dying of saltwater intrusion from countless cuts from oil company canals. The coast that protects New Orleans is drifting into open water—a football field vanishes every half-hour. We have seven years to save it, and nothing urgent being done. Just plans without funding.

We’ve had lots of plans, liked the detailed plans for the tabernacle that fill the last half of Exodus and the first half of Leviticus. We still haven’t built a place where God and man can meet. Our previous mayor promised “cranes in the sky,” but mainly he made plans. Our new mayor just announced 100 projects to be built right away. And I even believe him. Maybe at least we’ve reached the second part of Numbers, where the journey to Canaan resumes.

What story will be told in the end? Will we loiter at the edge like Moses on Mt. Nebo, or will all of us New Orleanians finally make it to the land of our promise?

Personally right now, I feel at home and homeless, feel the joy and the ruin, the loss and the courage, the sorrow of so many victims in exile, the hate and the love.

Some days I tire of all the stories. Then I dream of moving backward in time. They say it’s impossible but I don’t know. God is not homeless in my dreams. After five years in post-Katrina New Orleans, this New Year I want to go back where all the stories begin, look up in the sky, and see three heron fly.

WAIT, WHY DO I HAVE TO PAY TO COMMENT?
Tablet is committed to bringing you the best, smartest, most enlightening and entertaining reporting and writing on Jewish life, all free of charge. We take pride in our community of readers, and are thrilled that you choose to engage with us in a way that is both thoughtful and thought-provoking. But the Internet, for all of its wonders, poses challenges to civilized and constructive discussion, allowing vocal—and, often, anonymous—minorities to drag it down with invective (and worse). Starting today, then, we are asking people who'd like to post comments on the site to pay a nominal fee—less a paywall than a gesture of your own commitment to the cause of great conversation. All proceeds go to helping us bring you the ambitious journalism that brought you here in the first place.

I NEED TO BE HEARD! BUT I DONT WANT TO PAY.
Readers can still interact with us free of charge via Facebook, Twitter, and our other social media channels, or write to us at letters@tabletmag.com. Each week, we’ll select the best letters and publish them in a new letters to the editor feature on the Scroll.

We hope this new largely symbolic measure will help us create a more pleasant and cultivated environment for all of our readers, and, as always, we thank you deeply for your support.

The TP did not publish your complete email address, so I am sending this via the Tablet website.

As a fellow Jew, survivor of ‘The Storm’, and a slightly more than casual student of Torah Study for several years, your “Three heron..” column moved me to offer my comments:

Your alliterative column, printed in a general newspaper may be beyond the understanding of many non-Jewish readers, but I found it intriguing. Allow me to ask, however, while sitting “..outside shuttered cafes to catch the Internet,..and gathering (sic) to be human” what did you do to help anyone else? And what would ‘the rabbis’ have advised?

And as an entrepreneur for most of my 80+ years, may I respectfully ask if work as a Dream Therapist supports your family via client fees or institutional grants, or is it book and column royalties?

I love the feeling of moving backwards, disorienting to the mind, creating space for a new perspective. To anchor the present to the past is, for me, to connect what is newly emerging in me with a collective consciousness of the divine. Dreams seem like the portal to that connection.

Rodger,
Great piece of writing.Biblically New Orleans had a warning in the form of Hurricane Camille in 1969. At that time I was Chief Forecaster of a USAF Weather detachment in Vietnam. For years like Joseph and his dream interpertations to Pharoah, New Orleans officials had warnings from Meteorologists and the Corps of Engineers disregarded the damage Camille caused in their construction calculations.Had Pharoah not listened to Joseph and not stored grain for the seven lean years history would be very different. Maybe the Corps of Engineers should use your expertise in dream interpertation.

Fine fellow Rodger, Among all the voices Katrina has spawned, yours is one of the most genuine. In my Black Mountain refuge, I feel the old stabs at the heart again. No dreams ever of Katrina, but maybe when I am 80 or so, in two years, I can write about it.

You are, as always, an inspired and inspiring writer. I’ll be in London for RH and YK, but I still have the memory of post-Katrina N.O. seared in my memory from a brief visit a year later (which, to my horror, looked like perhaps a week later) — so I’ll think of you and of the homeless diety (which is why I’m hoping to access her/him in London as well). Shana Tova!
Tom

So many of us, like good New Orleanians, sneaked in with fake passes to check out our beloved city and home. I went in with some medical-type friends with hospital passes. Met a wonderful National Guard kid from Virginia who asked me if I needed a hug. I told him yes, and cried in his arms. He was patrolling my Lakeview neighborhood that had stewed and simmered in 11 feet of water for weeks. I didn’t know “dewatering” was even a word before this.

But we came back and served Leidenheimer bread and red beans and rice every Monday night to any friends in town. Hmmm. Perhaps I’ll do that again this Monday.
Come for dinner.

Rodger – this is a beautiful piece – incredibly powerful and very gentle all at once. Thank you for grounding my Rosh HaShanah in the realities of Post-Katrina New Orleans, the strange truths of the dream world, and for the reminder that “home” is a very complex place for Jews, non-jews, and God. I’m eager to read “Burnt Books”!

Your article brought me a sense of peace. Our family lived in the Hudson Valley when 9/11 crushed so many lives and dreams. It was great sadness and sympathy we watched the television coverage of the aftermath of Katrina. I will certainly reflect during the HIGH HOLIDAYS on the concept that G-d is homeless. The article is very moving. Thank you.

There is mystery surrounding what is commonly called Rosh Hashanah (The Feast of Trumpets). Unlike the other six Messianic feasts, it has no name in Scripture. It is simply referred to as Yom Teruah (תְּרוּעָה: Day of alarm, or shouting, or trumpet blast). It is a memorial, but what is being memorialized is uncertain. Jewish liturgy describes it as Yom HaDin (Day of Judgment). Although it is to be on the first day of Tishri, the seventh month of the Hebrew year, ascertaining the day is dependent on atmospheric conditions that could obscure the delicate crescent of the new moon. It could be said: “of that day and hour knoweth no man”….

I like the valuable information you provide in your articles. I’ll bookmark your blog and check again here frequently. I’m quite sure I’ll learn lots of new stuff right here! Good luck for the next!

Name (required)Email (required, will not be published)Website (optional)

Message

2000

Your comment may be no longer than 2,000 characters, approximately 400 words. HTML tags are not permitted, nor are more than two URLs per comment. We reserve the right to delete inappropriate comments.